Thursday, September 30, 2010

I got some interesting mail on the dog cartoon. A handful of people wrote to me and said how much they liked this cartoon, two of whom were professional cartoonists. This surprised me a bit, I didn't think it was all that clever, just sort of a funny visual. One site, The Comics Curmudgeon, one of my favorite daily reads and one that makes its bread by skewering cartoons, posted it just because they liked it. I secretly always wanted to be on that site but not for the eviscerating reasons that cartoons usually end up there. It was a dream come true.

Even more surprising was an email from someone who normally loves my work but hated this one because it was "cruel." Perhaps they did not realize it is only a cartoon man, no "real" people got hurt.

This brings us to Casual Friday. I've never worked in an office with a dress code and have always pitied those who do. It's particularly ridiculous when you have to wear something completely outside the norm, like a choir robe. Would people show less respect for someone in a suit? The British really go to town with this tradition, dressing their judges up like old women. Even their lawyers (which they have another name for; "chips" is it?) have to wear wigs and doilies. Try as I might, I cannot understand this kind of behaviour. (spelled the British way.) For consistency's sake, they should also make the defendants dress up in costumes. Perhaps something more amusing to break up all that black and grey. I'd like to suggest a duck costume since if things don't go well, they may be going "up the river."

Today's ancient offering is about history, science, voyeurism and religion. Here in NYC, people regularly spy on each other with binoculars and telescopes. It's just a given when so many of us live so closely together in high-rise buildings. You get used to it and don't think anything about it after a while. When I first came to NYC, my future wife, CHNW, used to routinely walk around her apartment at night in various stages of undress. I asked her why she didn't close her blinds and she said, quite innocently, "What's the point? The only thing across the street is a rectory full of priests." (Not to be confused with a rectum full...)

I shudder to think how many crises of faith she instigated as those poor souls struggled to maintain their commitment to celibacy. Except for the gay or pedophile ones, of course.

If you've not been to a Literary Death Match event, you should go, they're lots of fun. A number of professional authors get up and read a short passage from one of their works, then three semi-celebrity judges comment on their work, their performance and whatever else comes to mind.

One such event is taking place on October 8th in NYC and I'll be the judge handling "whatever else comes to mind." The point is comedy and the result is funny. Be there, enjoy it, talk about it for the rest of your life.

San Francisco Area peeps, do not forget to go see Will Franken this Friday and Saturday night at The Purple Onion. You will not regret your actions and I will offer this personal, iron-clad guarantee: If you don't think he is one of the most brilliant performers you've ever seen, I will fully refund your sense of doubt by shouting, "YES HE IS!!"

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

After more than 25 years as a daily cartoonist and over 9000 published cartoons, I find that I sometimes copy myself. This angel cartoon is one such occasion. When I wrote it a few weeks ago, I thought it was completely original, but a few days after it was submitted I was digging through old archives, gathering super hero cartoons for my next book, and saw an old Bizarro with the identical concept. If I'd thought to write down the date, I could have shown it to you here.

Instead, I'll have to use what I call "language" to describe it: A couple of angels in Heaven are looking at another angel who is upside-down, his head and shoulders buried in the clouds. His halo is above his feet, his robe is falling down, but not far enough to expose his underpants (which would be considered pornographic by daily funny pages standards.) One of the two onlookers says, "In life, he was a performance artist."

I was shocked to find that I had ripped myself off so closely without even knowing it; thank god it was one of my own gags and not someone else's. I've done that on a couple of occasions, too, and felt like a quantity of feces.

And now a horse-in-a-bar joke. This is one of those weird cartoons that doesn't relate much to real life, but to me, much of the humor is in the look on the horse's face. I put a lot of effort into getting just the right attitude and expression on my characters, I hope you, the reader, notice and appreciate that. Some do, some don't, that's the way the cartoon cookie crumbles.

I got out of the habit of posting older cartoons for a while, but I enjoy it and so do many readers (perhaps you are one of those?) so I'm back to it today. I've always enjoyed this take on the cliche of the guy whose wife doesn't understand him. In fact, this guy could have been me.

When I was 20, I traveled through Europe with a backpack and a train pass and while in Milan, I met a beautiful Romanian woman who was a few years older than I. We spent many weekends visiting museums and parks together and I developed a huge crush on her and would have been stupid enough to marry her and take her back home with me if she'd been willing. Thankfully she wasn't. She spoke five or six languages fluently, but English was not one of them. We communicated by means of a bizarre combination of the hundred-or-so English words she knew and the hundred-or-so Italian words in my vocabulary. The rest was pantomime and pictographs. It was terribly romantic but I can only imagine what calamity would have ensued if she'd come back to the U.S. with me, learned English, and we had found out what each other were really like.

I dodged that bullet, but caught many others throughout my foolish, youthful romantic escapades. But how many of us escape life without a few romantic bullet wounds? As somebody once said: Better to have loved and to have been ripped apart over and over again by the machine gun of ill-advised sexual choices than to have never loved at all. Amen, brother.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Thanks is due today to Brian Levy of somewhere, U.S.A., for sending me an email last summer suggesting I do a cartoon about that thing where people push the elevator button a bunch of times, as though it would make the box come faster. I don't remember Brian's exact take on this but I decided to go with a guy who takes the concept seriously. It made me smile.

Next up is the melba toast factory, another collaboration with my good friend, Wayno. He correctly points out on his blog that smaller bread and toasters would be both more realistic and funnier. I agree completely, but err on the side of safety in these matters because in many markets, my cartoons print the size of a business card. I'm not kidding. It's a wonder anybody bothers to read comics in those kinds of papers.

Part of the problem is that newspapers aren't doing well financially and need to reduce the amount of space they use on things that cost money (comics, columnists, games) as opposed to make money (advertising), and another part is that most cartoonists don't draw in a manner that needs to be viewed any larger than a postage stamp, so newspapers don't think much of shrinking the comics.

In other news: The benefit concert last weekend at Woodstock Sanctuary went really well. Moby did a charming and intimate acoustic setwith a couple of amazingly talented singers, and Kelli Scarr was typically brilliant as the opening act. To conclude the evening, we showed the avante gard film, The Red Balloon, as Moby joined Mercury Rev Clear Light Ensemble improvising music to the images. It was trippy, dude.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

I was pleased when I came up with this take on the famous "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" adage, but didn't think much of it beyond that. I didn't predict that it would be as popular as it turned out to be; I got quite a lot of emails about it. I guess many of us are weary of seeing everyone buried in electronic devices constantly. Cops say that a person wearing headphones is more likely to be victimized by a robber or pickpocket, which makes good sense I suppose. You're less likely to see or hear them coming when involved in whatever is going on in your ears. Do I sound like the proverbial Jewish mother, yet? How about this: Ear buds are more likely to cause hearing damage than large headphones. This actually does concern me because I've already got a permanent ringing in my ears and have lost of bit of hearing, presumably from being in a band years ago. Now I sound like a Jewish grandfather.

Speaking of three chimps, here is another gag about electronics, this one about texting. It was a collaboration with a friend of mine who was a regular writer on Seinfeld, Andy Cowan. You'll occasionally see his name on my cartoons as I've been enjoying working with him.

Lastly, is this cartoon about the odd ways of the Amish. They're famous for raising barns but not razing them. Is there another example in the English language of homonyms that are antonyms? (For those readers not familiar with these grammatical terms, a "homonym" is a word that describes gay people in some way, an "antonym" is, you guessed it, one that describes ants.)

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

To my surprise, there were quite a few readers who didn't understand this cartoon. I didn't get into a lengthy discussion with them so I don't know if it was because they are so unfamiliar with recycling that they don't recognize the triangle symbol, or if their minds were so anthropocentric that they could not make the leap between reincarnation/eternal life and recycling.

This cartoon idea came from my dandy buddy, Richard Cabeza, who has contributed some dandy ideas to Bizarro before. As I've mentioned on this blog in the past, my work is also offered in a strip format and since they usually don't entail much extra art – just a reconfiguration of the panel version – I don't bother posting them. This one, however, adds some punch to the church atmosphere, so I'm sharing it with you. Click it for a better view.

I've never quite thought of it this way, but our species' persistence in religious beliefs can be thought of as a desire to be recycled. Most people cannot bring themselves to believe that they will end when their body gives out. The way our brains work, it is difficult not to feel there is a difference between "us" and our bodies. I do not believe in any such difference and think that those feelings are a brain function, like everything else we think and experience. And that when I die, I die; that's it, no more me, no afterlife, no purpose. In contrast to the panic that most people seem to feel about an exclusively biological life with no divine purpose or destination, I find it comforting. I no longer fear dying except for whatever pain or fear might occur during the process; I won't exist to care. Much the way I cannot care what happens in another apartment across town when I'm asleep.

By far the most talented and unusual comic genius I know is performing in San Francisco in about 10 days. I highly recommend you go see his show if you're in that area, or highly recommend it to your Bay Area friends. This guy does not disappoint and every one of his shows is a unique experience. He's some kind of strange performance art/comedian/philosopher/philatelist hybrid. He defies description. I'm not kidding.

WILL FRANKEN RISES FROM THE ASHESTWO NIGHTS ONLYThe PURPLE ONION140 COLUMBUS AVENUE, SAN FRANCISCOFRIDAY, OCTOBER 1st AND SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2nd 8pm BOTH NIGHTSONLY $20 AT THE DOOR

If I were within 200 miles of SF on those dates, I 'd see both shows. Spread the word.

Monday, September 20, 2010

I'm not sure how I feel about this air traffic control cartoon. It's completely unrealistic, of course, the dude at the radar would know that something was wrong long before it got to this point. But I suppose the visual is sort of fun, the big dot on the screen then the big dot on the plane's nose. Whatever. A cartoon-a-day for over 25 years, they can't all be classics.

This Adam and Eve cartoon from 2000 is a bit more fun, I believe. When I was a kid being indoctrinated by nuns in Catholic school, I noticed that all of the pictures of Adam and Eve "before the fall" had expertly-placed leaves to hide their naughty bits.

By the time I was eight years old I could see that nothing about that story made any sense but I wasn't confident enough to dispute it publicly until many years later. It's amazing the power that early programming has over a person. You can convince a small child of absolutely anything and it will follow them for life like the genital-hiding foliage of the Old Testament. If people weren't told about god until they were adults, religions of any kind would have almost no power. Imagine trying to talk an adult who did not already believe in an invisible magic guy in the sky that flying a plane into a building would be a good idea.

Friday, September 17, 2010

I'm proud to present to you today one of my favorite cartoons in ages. The 21st Century Freakshow is brilliant, and I can say that without fear of immodesty because I didn't write it. (Damn!) I think I did a good job of drawing it (be sure to click it to see the larger version) but the original idea and sketch, pretty much in this form, came from my brilliant friend, colleague, and occasional collaborator, Wayno. I hate his guts. And I love him for donating this idea to Bizarro. He's a mensch.

The first state fair I ever attended was in Tulsa, Oklahoma around 1972 or so and back then they still had the old-school freak shows which consisted mostly of deformed people in cheap costumes. The "Abominable Snowman" was a guy with elephantitis of the feet, wearing a fake-fur caveman outfit and holding a big club. The "Alligator Girl" was a very old woman in a bikini whose entire body was covered in a scaly skin disorder of some kind. They sat all day in a plywood cubicle sort of thing inside a tent and you paid your money and went up and looked over the wall to see them. The look on their faces could be described as zombiesque and who could blame them? It's also worth noting that one of the attractions was invariably "The Fat Lady." At the time, a 300 lbs. woman was a rare sight, but they were no bigger than the average Walmart shopper of today.

Though still not to my taste, the freak shows of today are much more interesting, for my money. They are primarily people who do really weird things, like picking up a Buick by connecting a chain to the loop in their pierced tongue, or someone who has tattooed their entire body with all 44 presidents of The United States. I'm glad the old freak shows are gone, but I'm also glad I got to see one before they disappeared. I'm not sure why, just one of those odd experiences that one can appreciate in retrospect. At the time, however, I found it sad and haunting.

Speaking of freaks, next up is this gorilla cartoon which probably isn't all that funny to non-vegan folks. When you tell people you don't eat any animal products, the first question they often ask is "where do you get your protein?" The idea that humans need mounds of bloody animal protein to be strong and healthy is medically untrue; a myth perpetuated by the meat and dairy industries. There is plenty enough protein in plants to be healthy and strong, as any of the many huge, strong herbivores can attest: gorillas, rhinos, giraffes, cattle, etc. Children raised on vegan diets (after they finish their own mother's milk, of course) are many times less likely to develop most of your big diseases like cancers, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, etc. And they grow just as tall (but not as wide) as their burger-eating peers.

Don't forget to tell your NY area friends to come to The Steam Powered Hour on Sunday night where I'll be doing some music and comedy. Empty rooms are not good for comedy.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Gosh, I've missed you. I meant to post some cartoons yesterday but got swept up into the UFO of responsibility and was anally probed late into the night. But here I am today, perched on a foam rubber doughnut.

If anyone enjoys meaningless historical research, see if you can find out where the cliche bag full of money with a dollar sign on the outside came from. I'm guessing it was invented for a cartoon of some sort, but you never know. Perhaps it was a standard in vaudeville or maybe banks really did put money in those kind of bags to keep them from being confused with laundry.

I also wonder if anyone has ever shown up to rob a bank and forgotten to bring anything to put the money in. What if the teller runs all over the place and can't find anything appropriate? Meanwhile, the robber waits at the window threatening to shoot him/her but knows that's not going to speed up the process. Then the police arrive and the forgetful robber is busted. Another great reason to bring your canvas shopping bags with you each time you leave the house, folks.

This big hat cartoon makes me smile, but I'm afraid the sign is a little confusing. I meant for it be say that backpacks as well as hats larger than 10 gallons are to be checked at the door, but you could read it to mean that backpacks larger than ten gallons as well as hats larger than ten gallons... which is screwy. Oh well, no point in over thinking it now.

Today's offering from the Cartoon Time Machine is an old favorite of a number of readers – presumably those who do not like their boss. It's always fun to find a way to make a point that would otherwise be rejected by newspaper editors; in this case calling the boss a horse's ass.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

I'm doing a variety show thing in NYC this coming Sunday night, September 19, 2010. There will be music and comedy by several performers, two of whom will be me. I'll do a ten-minute set of comedy, then later in the show I'll be performing one of my original songs (not a comedy song) about Brooklyn. It's called "Brooklyn."

The show is hosted by my buddy, Matthew Diffee, famed cartoonist of The New Yorker and fellow former Texan. Please come by if you're in the area, please send your area friends if you're not.

Tickets are $10 at the door or $7 in advance at www.nuyorican.org TICKETS AND INFO

The first cartoon shown here is a take on the cliche, "Let me through I'm a doctor" deal. In this case, the cartoony-looking guy has slipped on a banana peel and only a cartoonist will do. In my continuing habit of honoring Alfred Hitchcock, I appear as the cartoonist. My good friend and colleague, Wayno, came up with this idea. We had different ideas about this cartoon which we didn't discover until I published it and we got to chatting. He explains here why his original victim was a wealthy dandy, whereas I always think of the fallen slapstick victim as a blue-collar dude, like the moving guy who gets crushed by the piano.

This second cartoon is fairly odd even for me, which is what I like about it. I often notice bored couples in restaurants who seem not to say a word during their entire dining experience, even while waiting for the food. CHNW talks so much (even when she's alone) that I doubt that will ever happen to us. It always makes me sad to see this, but I could be assuming too much. Maybe they're as happy as anyone else, they just don't like to gab about it all the time.

Cartoon three is from the archives of Bizarro Headquarters. Keith Rust is an actual friend of mine. I didn't choose him for any particular reason, just thought he'd be a good subject for this gag. This is the sort of classically surreal gag that I really love and don't come up with nearly often enough.

Finally, I'm on my way to the San Francisco Bay Area for a couple of appearances (I'll be at the Schulz Museum Saturday from 1pm to 4:30pm) so I won't be posting again until next Tuesday, Sept 14. Hope to see you then.

By the way, I'll be doing a short comedy set and singing an original song at a dandy variety show in NYC on Sunday, Sept 19th. If you're in the area, drop by, golldernit. Famed cartoonist from The New Yorker, Matthew Diffee, will be backing me up on banjo. For reals.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The first cartoon I've posted today is one of my favorites in a long time and is my cartoon answer to the sort of folks who write scathing letters to me about something they found offensive about one of my cartoons. Regular readers of this blog have seen a few of the kookier bits of hate mail I've received, so you know what I'm talking about.

Recently I've begun receiving mail from people who are upset that I put the "K2" into my cartoons. I've been doing this for around 15 years, it represents my two daughters, whose names both begin with K (Krapuzar and Krelspeth) but apparently there is some kind of recreational drug or something that goes by K2 now and people think I'm promoting it. Like I would do that. I haven't bothered to look this thing up so I have no idea what their talking about. Is it illegal? Is it actually dangerous like chrystal meth or is the supposed danger a corporate-inspired myth as with marijuana? For all I know you can buy it at a health food store but it's cutting into pharmaceutical profits so Fox News is waging a propaganda war against it. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

This next cartoon is about the constantly growing list of things airlines are charging for. Soon there will be a two-drink minimum. Where will it end? And when will someone invent a way to get a large airplane off the ground without using fossil fuels? There could easily be a time in the near future when there are no airlines because of fuel difficulties. Weird.

From the archives, here is one of my long-time favorites that was used on the cover of one of my early books. An embarrassing first day in Heaven.

CHNW and I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane a couple of years ago. It's tons of fun and we didn't die. Unless the afterlife looks just like our normal lives.

As some of you know, I don't actually believe in any kind of afterlife but it's such an irresistible premise for cartoons that I use it a lot.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

I have one of these high-falutin' iPhones, but it isn't the latest one. I think it's about two versions back. Maybe the iPhone 3 or 4, I'm not sure. I like all the apps but I can't say that I really make the best use of them. I'm not much of a techno-geek, so I don't really know how much is available or have the time to fool with it. Coming up with new ones for this cartoon was a lot of fun, however.

If you have an iPhone, the most important thing to remember is that Bizarro has an app that feeds your phone a new cartoon every day, the same one that's in newspapers worldwide. It also has a year's worth of searchable archive and links to my website and this blog. All this for about $2 or $3 a year. What? A year's worth of creativity and sweat for the price of a single beer in a bar? Yes, it's absurd, I know.

I don't control the business decisions about such things but I'm told if the iPhone app does well, they'll expand to other platforms like Droid.

And now to the hip-hop. I know that a lot of you like the hip-hop but I can't tolerate it. Even a few seconds of it on a commercial drives me nuts. The problem is that I love music and by definition, hip-hop is non-musical. Sure, every now and then a singer chimes in with a nice chorus but the defining characteristic of it is that it is someone shouting angry rhymes to a simple electronic rhythm. Maybe it is supposed to be more about the lyrics than the presentation, but it strikes out with me on that front, too. I'm just not that interested in the sexual habits and desires of others.

I'm not as much of an old fogy as I sound here. I listen to new music all the time, usually the stuff I think they call "alternative rock," but there are a few entire categories that don't resonate with me. Another would be the modern popular country sound, whatever they call that. The stuff people like Kenny Chesney do. Also heavy metal is a problem for me. Never liked any of it, even when I was an angst-ridden teenage boy, which is the prime audience. And disco. And anything on those stations they usually bill as being "light rock" that play a lot of Eagles, and the romantic pop stations that play a lot of Christina Aguilera or whoever.

Come to think of it, it would be quicker to mention the genres I do like. I guess I'm pretty picky about music.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Quick announcement:I'm going to be appearing at the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California on Saturday afternoon, Sept 11, 2010. I'll be joining a metric buttload of other cartoonists from 1pm to 3pm for a sketch-a-thon, which means we sit behind tables and draw stuff for free or sign books or whatever, and then at 3:30pm, I'm doing a talk in the auditorium. It'll be fun, funny and FREE. Hope to see some of youse there.

P.S. Tell them you found out about it on this blog and it will be even MORE free.

So what's the deal with people who wear their sunglasses on the back of their head? Is this the logical extension of the backwards baseball cap? For me, both of these trends show a small glimpse of the the sort of utterly nonsensical behavior humans are uniquely known for. Baseball caps have bills on them to block the sun, so let's wear them backwards. Sunglasses were invented to protect our eyes, so let's put them on the back of our heads. Shoes exist to protect our feet, let's wear them on our hands. Or better yet, tie them to our belt and let them dangle from our waist. Non-human animals don't engage in this kind of behavior. Having a mutant, complex brain is a mixed bag, often leading us to do things we can't logically explain.

From the archives today we have a cannibal joke from 1999. There have been lots of puns about cannibals, my favorite being the clown in the giant cooking pot and a cannibal commenting that he "tastes funny." No idea who first did that, but it still makes me smile.

I've done other cannibal and primitive tribe cartoons and I've learned over the years that you have to be careful not to make them look African. This draws complaints from people who think you're advancing the racist stereotypes that black folks are more primitive than white. The best-known cannibals were mostly from the South Pacific, although it's been practiced from time to time by all kinds of cultures across the globe. The characters in my cartoon look pretty nondescript so I didn't get any angry letters.

A word of warning to any readers thinking of taking up the practice, cannibalism by any species leads to terminal dementia. Mad Cow Disease is the direct result of feeding ground-up cattle to cattle, for instance, which has been a money-saving practice of meat producers for some time. Some scientists believe that Alzheimer's Disease may be an offshoot from eating meat that has been raised that way, but it hasn't been proved.

The bottom line is, eating other people is probably okay on an occasional basis, but you wouldn't want to make a habit of it. Eating other species who ate their own is probably not a good idea, either.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Today's theme is religion as all but the too-dense-to-be-reading-this-blog can easily see. As a vegan, I hate to promote any good news about cheese, but this pun was too much fun to pass up so I made an exception. If this were the shape of the folks who pester you at home you could answer the door with a giant cracker and scare the hell out of them.

Speaking of Hell, here's a ditty from the archives, from December of '96. This cartoon was requested by a friend who claims it as her favorite. She found it in my book, "Life is Strange and So Are You." It's out of print, as all my books are because you people don't buy enough books, but you can likely still find copies of it if you search online. Amazon may even have some.

This cartoon was from the time before I had learned to color my own work on computer, so I was doing it the old-fashioned way, which was to send the black and white version to the printer with elaborate numbers all over it telling them where to put various percentages of blue, red, yellow, and black. Coloring these things with numbers was an art form all it's own and you never knew what you were going to get until it came out in the paper. This one is ugly as hell, which is apropos. If I were doing it today, it would look so much better.

By the way, this depiction of "heck" is based on a visit to my grandparents' house. They suffered every day of their lives sitting on plastic-covered furniture, but when they died, it was as beautiful and new as the day it was bought. Praise Cheeses.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The basic idea for the baboon joke was sent to me by a reader. I really wish I'd thought of it. So perfect. My wife, CHNW, had heart surgery when she was 20 because one of her valves had been eaten away by a random infection. She needed to have the valve replaced and was offered either a mechanical one or a pig's valve. As regular readers know, she's an avid animal rights activist so you can imagine her response to the pig valve. She got a mechanical one, of course, and now ticks like a clock. When it's really quiet, you can actually hear it.

"Whack-A-Mirror" is based on the popular "Whack-A-Mole" arcade game. I love the self-loathing aspect. Not sure why, I guess because I hate myself sometimes. Don't we all? Please tell me you hate yourself sometimes, I don't want to be the only one. That would give me more reason to hate myself.

This final gag from the archives of Bizarro International Headquaters is a longtime fave of mine. I've seen a few takes on the "I can take that for you if you'd like to be in it" phenomenon, but this is among my favorites. In those days, I used to draw TONS of background on almost every cartoon. I do less of that now because I already work too many hours and the joke is the same either way. Even still, I draw more backgrounds than 99% of cartoonists, so I don't feel so bad. No mirror-whacking for me today.